There was a time—not as long ago as I’d like to believe—when I imagined all novelists as Ernest Hemingways, hero-adventurers who shot tigers, fought in wars, seduced wild-eyed women, gambled their life savings at high-stakes poker, won duels, lost duels, and wrote frantic bursts of prose while standing upright in their rented rooms in Havana or Saigon or Beirut. I didn’t fully understand the standing-upright part, but I had read that Hemingway worked this way. At first I figured it had something to do with the immense ferocity of the act; surely he was too wired with genius to sit down at a desk. The more I thought about it, though, it occurred to me that the reason Hemingway wrote standing up was to allow a woman (his muse, no doubt) to more easily “inspire” him while he was in the midst of his demanding labor. This image—of the great writer madly scribbling masterpieces while being fellated by a native woman—haunted me. If this was the writing life, who wouldn’t want to be a writer? . . . I had just turned 21 years old.

Q: Your collection has many Latino characters, and they all interact with characters from other backgrounds. Did you intend this bicultural or multicultural dimension of the book from the start, and do you think Latino writers face any special challenges in writing about Latino characters and culture for today’s varied literary audiences?

Lopez: This is a complicated question, and I thank you for asking it. For me, I did not set out to do more than explore characters beyond their cultural definition. As mentioned, I wanted to avoid that performance of identity that essentializes cultural experience. I am not interested in providing the usual themes, characters, and props that many associate with Latino literature. These do not characterize my experience as a Latina, so why should I artificially simulate such things to validate stereotypic notions? I can think of no reason to do this, except to gratify expectations of others....

I am not out to give anyone (including myself) what he or she might be expecting. In speaking to other Latino writers, I find that we similarly resist gratifying expectations that our characters perform in culturally expected ways, say, rolling tortillas, bopping around the barrio, or gathering wisdom from a sweet abuela. More and more, Latino literature is evolving away from such stereotypes, and becoming more interesting and challenging in the process.

Film Discussion:
THE GREATEST SILENCE
with speaker Megan Watson, PhD, LMHP

Saturday, Feb. 27 - Film begins at 1:00
Discussion following film (approx. 2:20 p.m.)

Admission to the discussion is free and open to the public. Admission  
to THE GREATEST SILENCE is at regular Ross prices.

Megan Watson is a psychologist in private practice who works with  
treating immigrants, refugees, and torture survivors. Watson does  
trauma work and focuses on culturally competent, holistic treatment.

Before its closure, Watson spent three years working at the FIRST  
Project, a torture treatment center in Lincoln.

THE GREATEST SILENCE: RAPE IN THE CONGO

Winner of the Sundance Special Jury Prize in Documentary and the  
inspiration for a 2008 U.N. Resolution classifying rape as a weapon of  
war, this extraordinary film, shot in the war zones of the Democratic  
Republic of Congo (DRC), shatters the silence that surrounds the use  
of sexual violence as a weapon of conflict.

why some people be mad at me sometimes

they ask me to remember
but they want me to remember
their memories
and i keep on remembering
mine

     I can tell you now

that I tried to take it all in, record it
     for an elegy I'd write--one day--

when the time came.  Your daughter,
     I was that ruthless.  What does it matter

if I tell you I learned to be?

. . . how easily
     the anatomist's blade opens a place in me,

like a curtain drawn upon a room in which
     each learned man is my father

and I hear, again, his words--I study
     my crossbreed child--

*[Mr. Collins, at dinner with the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice:]
     ". . . Her ladyship seemed pleased with the idea, and you may imagine that I am happy on every occasion to offer those little delicate compliments which are always acceptable to ladies. I have more than once observed to Lady Catherine that her charming daughter seemed born to be a duchess, and that the most elevated rank, instead of giving her consequence, would be adorned by her. -- These are the kind of little things which please her ladyship, and it is a sort of attention which I conceive myself peculiarly bound to pay.''

     "You judge very properly,'' said Mr. Bennet, "and it is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?''
     "They arise chiefly from what is passing at the time, and though I sometimes amuse myself with suggesting and arranging such little elegant compliments as may be adapted to ordinary occasions, I always wish to give them as unstudied an air as possible.''
     Mr. Bennet's expectations were fully answered. His cousin was as absurd as he had hoped, and he listened to him with the keenest enjoyment, maintaining at the same time the most resolute composure of countenance, and, except in an occasional glance at Elizabeth, requiring no partner in his pleasure.

[Woolf] hated any form of publicity . . . because it transformed the strenuous art of reading into the easily digestible pap of "interviews with the author," reviews of, lectures on--everything but the thing itself.  She felt that serious reading was gradually becoming extinct, to be replaced by forms of communication designed by a new class of cultural middlemen who had insinuated themselves between writer and reader.

Four days ago, the dogwood was a fist

in protest.  Now look.  Even she unfurls

to the pleasure of the season.  Don't be

ashamed of yourself.  Don't be.  This happens

to us all.  We have thrown back the blanket.

We're naked and we've grown to love ourselves.

I tell you, do not be ashamed.

Latin countries generally do well in happiness surveys. Mexico and Colombia rank higher than the United States in self-reported contentment. Perhaps one reason is a cultural emphasis on family and friends, on social capital over financial capital. . . .